Thursday, January 27, 2011

Cardinals in the birches

We've been having so much snow here lately that I decided to make a card with a snowy feel. I was inspired by the Hero Arts Tree Trunks stamp (S5477). It looks like birch trees in winter to me so I though it would be perfect. We have quite a few cardinals in our yard hunting for food so I thought they would complete the scene. I made the cardinals with a Martha Stewart punch and Distress ink colored white cardstock. I made both red and a color that looks like the female cardinal to punch them from. I chose a dark gray cardstock for the main card and I white embossed the trees. I matted the card on the same red that I used for the male cardinal and then adhered the whole thing to a white card. Enjoy winter! TFL!

Our house on the hill


For this project, I was inspired by the Mi Casa set (CL389) from Hero Arts. I started by Distress ink coloring the blue sky on white cardstock. I then overstamped the sky with the Flourish background stamp (CG119) in white ink. I then colored another piece of white cardstock with multiple colors of Distress inks to make the ground. I cut the paper into a hill shape and adhered it to the main sky paper. I stamped one of the houses on a patterned paper, a solid brown paper, and also on the sky and ground paper. I cut out the base of the house from the patterned paper and the roof from the brown paper and glued them to the main paper. I stamped and cut the birds from yellow and magenta patterned papers and arranged them in the sky. I stamped the tree and colored with markers. I stamped Welcome in black ink with the Bird Branch alphabet (CL138). For more interest, I decided to cut the image into six equal pieces and frame the whole thing. This now hangs in my entryway (photo below). I ended up making a couple of these as presents this past Christmas for family. TFL!
the project hanging in our entryway